The Command

Mount Whitney was the East Coast command ship, a swollen gray blimp spiky with antennas and dishes. A staff officer took them down a hushed, carpeted corridor. In the flag captain’s office a Jack Mathias introduced himself and gently detached McCall. She’d not be required, he said. The admiral would see Horn alone. Mathias grimaced apologetically, like a proctologist’s nurse. Dan’s mood of disanticipation sank another notch.

“Lenson,” Niles rumbled. He didn’t get up or ask Dan to sit. Just reared back in the padded chair, pale-palmed hands locked behind his bull neck. Dan tried to swallow his nerves by inspecting him back. But Niles’s Certified Navy Twill khakis looked as if they’d just come from the tailor. Three silver stars flashed like rhodium-plated shark’s teeth at his collar points. He looked more grizzled around the edges but otherwise the same: massive, beefy, and pissed off. Even the jar of Atomic Fireballs on his desk might have been the one Dan had sampled in Crystal City, years before. The flag captain was lingering in the doorway. Niles pointed a finger pistol and blew him away.

Dan opened with, “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Bullcrap. You hate my guts. And notice I’m not saluting your Congressional.”

“I hadn’t noticed, sir.”

Niles blinked like a rhino contemplating a charge. “I have no idea how you got it. Or a command. It wouldn’t have happened if I was on the board. I have no idea how your wife fixed this dames-at-sea fiasco for you either, but we’re going to unfix it just as fast.”

“She had nothing to do with it, sir. I got the CO selection before she was named assistant secretary. And it’s not a fiasco. Not yet, anyway.”

Dan remembered too late, contradicting Niles wasn’t the way to get on his good side. The pouched eyes burned even redder. “Well, just to make it clear, we aren’t going that way.”

“What way, sir?”

“Women do the job on the auxiliaries. But we don’t need them aboard combatants.”

“It’s good to hear your policy on that, sir. I was hoping to get some guidance as long as I was here.”

“I’m sure you were. It’s horseshit, and we’re not going to stand still for it.”

“Who is ‘us,’ Admiral?”

“The service leadership. He keeps pushing this, he’s going to see a backlash he won’t believe.”

Dan wondered why a black man would be so set against integrating women. But obviously being black didn’t mean you were a liberal, a lesson Nick Niles seemed to live to personify.

Niles was looking out the curtained porthole. No, not a porthole, more like a round picture window. “Lenson, I have a problem with your commanding one of my ships. A big problem. Usually you Academy guys understand the concept of obeying an order. But it didn’t take with you. You were out sick that day, or something. To you a command’s not a command, it’s some sort of suggestion from above.”

“I work within the system, sir. As long as possible.”

“And when you decide it isn’t?”

“I try to take responsibility, and act. I know that can’t be officially encouraged. But if any service has a tradition of independent action, it’s got to be us.”

“I see. It’s not direct disobedience. It’s taking responsibility.”

Dan didn’t bother to answer again. He sounded defensive even to himself. The worst of it was, at some level, Niles was right. He did regard power as intrinsically suspect, and thanks to the shrink, he thought he knew why. Growing up with an abusive cop for a father didn’t give you the warm fuzzies for authority figures.

“And as far as the system—you have no idea what the system even is. You think you’re smarter than we are.”

“No, sir, I don’t—”

“You think you’re holier, or more ethical, or something. But we have the big picture and you don’t. You react too fast; you don’t think things through. God! You resigned once. How about trying it again?”

“Sorry, sir. I like command.”

“I can’t believe you got a ship,” Niles said again. He shook his head, like a stymied water buffalo. “But since you did, I’ll be watching. No more Lenson adventures. No more hanging people. Fuck up, just once, and you’ll be on the beach. Let’s see you stay in with a relief for cause in your jacket.”

Dan was still standing, at an almost reflexive brace. Niles stared at him for some seconds more, then picked up a red-striped message folder. Leaving Dan unsure whether the interview was over. “Are you done with me, Admiral?” he said at last.

And Niles said, just as he had years before, “Oh, I’ve had enough. Get the fuck out of here.”

* * *

His hands shook, his fists were balled. Mathias’s glance was pitying. Dan stood in the passageway, trying to regain control. Fighting the murderous gloom that shadowed everything he saw.

Then, from nowhere, he wondered: What am I so upset about? Niles didn’t like him. So what? He’d never expected to make 0–5, and here he was. Never expected to get a command, and he had.